The Perfect Mother(90)

I take a bottle of breast milk from the freezer, nearly the last of the stash I was able to pump before my supply dried up. I know I should have been more disciplined about it, setting my alarm for the middle of the night to keep pumping, taking more herbs, drinking that awful lactation tea. Once again, I’ve failed.

“Sit down,” I tell Francie, sticking the bottle into the microwave. “And please don’t tell me microwaving breast milk destroys all its good properties. I am aware of that. I’ve read the same books. And I’m choosing to adhere to my own parenting philosophy. It’s called Mothers: Fuck All of You.” I laugh and glance down at Colette, who is leaving a pool of blood on the kitchen tiles. “Maybe you should ghostwrite a book about that,” I tell her.

I take the bottle to the couch and look at the others, noticing something. “Wait,” I say. “Where are your babies?”

Francie is silent, but then something changes in her expression. She seems to compose herself. “It’s girls’ day,” she says, sitting down beside me, her eyes on Joshua. “Remember? We said no babies. Right, Nell?”

“Girls’ day?” I tug down the fabric of the baby carrier and prod the nipple into Joshua’s mouth. “Sounds fun. I must have missed that e-mail. I just hope you’re not hungry. This meeting is unexpected.”

Colette moans from the kitchen floor, and I see that Nell is pressing one of my good hand towels into the wound at her side. “Did you bring your muffins?” I ask Colette.

Nell’s face is chalky. “Her muffins?”

“Isn’t that her thing? She brings the muffins, the rest of us bring the ennui.” Joshua squirms at my chest, and I pull the bottle from his mouth. He lets out a burp. Barely a burp, but it will do. I stand to make a note of it in my notebook but then decide to sit back down. I’ll do it later, after they leave.

“Well, how about some coffee?” Francie asks.

“Coffee? What about the clogged duct? I told you caffeine just makes it worse.”

“I know. I gave up. Formula feeding now.”

“Formula? Really? That’s too bad.” Joshua is watching me, and I know there’s no use in continuing to avoid his eyes. Right away I see the scolding look, the anger. He so resembles his father right now. Asking me how I let this happen, why I haven’t done a better job of avoiding this, like I promised I would. I look away. “Coffee? Let’s see.”

I walk back into the narrow kitchen and open the cupboards. “Nope. I’ve already packed the coffeepot. Lactation tea will have to do. Now where are the mugs?”

I start the water and rifle through a box in front of the door, spotting the tacky Cape Cod Is for Lovers cup Dr. H bought me as a joke at a rest stop during our first weekend away together two years ago. The first time we had sex somewhere other than the floor of his office, the white noise machine turned as high as possible, in case his next patient arrived early. The weekend he first said he was in love with me, and long before I discovered what a monster he could be.

I unearth a jar of unopened pickles and a can of black beans in the back of the cupboard. I pop open the pickles, pour the beans into a clean bowl, and when the water is ready, I carry them to the coffee table with the tea.

“Looks great,” Francie says, but her face doesn’t register appreciation for my efforts. Knowing her, she’s judging me for not having baked something. She takes her tea. “Now, as you know, we have a certain way of starting these meetings,” she says.

“You mean my birth story?” I laugh. “That was my idea, wasn’t it?”

Francie nods. “And since you’re hosting, you should go.”

I urge Joshua to accept the pacifier clipped to his shirt. “Well, I delivered on Mother’s Day. I lay down for a nap—”

“No,” Francie interrupts. “Before that. Start with the pregnancy.”

“Oh, okay. Let’s see. So, Dr. H didn’t want any more kids. He claims I tricked him, but I was on the pill. I’m the one percent.” I laugh. “Not that one percent. The other one. The one the birth control package warns you about.”

“Dr. H?”

“My psychiatrist. Joshua’s dad. I called him my boyfriend once.” I cringe, remembering that moment at the bar in Queens, next to the hotel where we’d sometimes meet. “My boyfriend will have another whiskey sour,” I told the bartender, a woman in her seventies, plastic earrings dangling from her stretched lobes, a Styrofoam cup swimming with cigarette butts between the dusty bottles of flavored vodka behind her.

She turned to make the drink, and he seethed beside me. “Don’t ever call me that again,” he whispered in my ear, his hand gripping my thigh, leaving five purple dots I discovered later that night as I undressed for him. “We’re not a pair of fucking teenagers.”

“He’s married,” I tell Francie. “But we were together for two years.” I roll my eyes. “You know, on and off.”

Francie nods. “Is he the one parking the car right now? Your husband?”

“Hmmmm?” Oh right. I’d said that earlier. “No. I don’t have a husband.”

“So Dr. H—”

“We haven’t spoken in months, since I told him I was going to keep Joshua. He’s kind of nuts. Narcissistic personality disorder, if you ask me. It makes it hard for people to love others. I learned about it from him, in fact. The only person your father was capable of loving was himself. That’s what Dr. H always said, but swear to god, he could have been talking about himself.” I’m surprised to feel a lump growing in my throat. This isn’t easy to talk about.